Dan Orvall
Name: Dan Orvall Gender: '''Male '''Age: '''17 '''Grade: 11 School: Patriot High Hobbies and Interests: Art, trance, rock and pop music, reading, political writing, political literature, marijuana, casual sex, running, extreme horror and art films Appearance: Dan is tall, skinny, and tan, weighing in at about 165 pounds and standing at about 6’3”. His body is the lean, toned runner’s body: he is not excessively muscular, but his abdominals and legs are strongly built. His usual pick of clothing alternates between flannels and tight designer made polos and V-necks, the occasional band T-shirt sneaking in, with khaki pants or jeans. He has tattoos on the back of his right ankle, along his neck, along his left forearm, and one on his back. The one along his neck is “Truth,” the one on his forearm is “Love,” and the one on the back of his ankle is “Pain.” Along with this, emblazoned along his upper back is a sun rising above a horizon. His face looks like it fits perfectly into the stereotype of the “punk” subculture. He has shortly cropped, spiky black hair, with a stud in his tongue and nose, and gold hoop earrings. His eyes are long and thin, and a brownish color with speckles of green in the irises. Above them hang his dainty, neatly plucked eye brows. He keeps a certain stubble to his face, surrounding a smile that has a warmth that goes against the grim, darker look of the rest of his face. His nose is sharp, long, and angular, and his ears are the same. Biography: Dan was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of James Orvall, a government worker, and Cherry Orval, a stay at home mother. He is the youngest of three brothers; his two older brothers David and Ryan are currently serving part of their military service. David is four years older than Dan, while Ryan is six years older. Like their father, both David and Ryan are staunchly pro-government, and even from a young age Dan’s head was filled with pro-government propaganda from them and his father. That was just the premier example; various child games had pro-government, pro-American, racist leanings to them. They tried to instill these same values in Dan from a young age, and for a normal kid, it may have worked. Unfortunately, Dan was a rebellious kid. Growing up, everything he did was under a microscope by his father. Stepping out of line, even in the smallest way, earned rebukes and disciplinary talks. It made Dan feel like a prisoner, and as such, even as a young boy he grew a resentment for authorities and rules. This resentment would only grow as he grew up and became more and more aware of the people his family were. His father and his many affairs. His brothers and their respective dope habits, pain killers and ecstasy being the drugs of choice. His mother and her shallowness, her willingness to simply ignore anything that disagreed with the “perfect” life she was building for herself. But he only realized these things later; as a young boy, his rebelliousness was simply due to a dislike for the rules and punishments his father placed on him, and a desire to be free from them. As such, most of his childhood was marked by disobedience to teachers, bad grades, pranks, and fights with his classmates. There was no reason behind these behaviors, other than to simply show disrespect to authority and to cause trouble. The school’s punishments did not work on him. If he got detention, he’d simply sit there for the duration of it, not saying a word, and then after he left, go back to the same behavior that had got him there in the first place. If he was suspended, he’d go home, and then the next day be back to troublemaking. The school, exasperated by their apparent failure to do anything to change this behavior, placed pressure on his parents to do something about their son. This worried his father James, and he tried all kinds of methods to make his son into a model citizen, knowing the repercussions that could happen if his son continued to be a trouble maker as he grew older. Even more disturbing were the questions that Dan asked of James: questions about the government, about America, about whether or not either were right. So James tried everything he could; insults, harsh punishments, even threats of physical violence. Cherry watched, seemingly not caring that her husband’s disciplinary methods bordered on abuse, only hoping that James would find a way to stop her friends from asking her questions about her “problem child”. His brothers, on the other hand, were too wrapped up in their own lives to try to either comfort their brother or to stop their father. James methods did nothing to stop Dan, however; on the contrary, they seemed only to increase his bad behavior and his growing dislike of all of his family. James felt like he had made a major step in 6th grade when all of a sudden, Dan seemed to finally get out of his trouble making stage. He became far more interested in school, improving his grades to the top of his class. He began to socialize more with the kids in his class, or at least that was what his father saw. It was not due to James methods, though; they were still as much of a failure as they always had been. It was due, really, to just one coincidence. It was one day in Dan’s life when he was about 11 years old, when he saw his father cheating with another woman. He was young, but he was not stupid, and he knew exactly what it was. He was tormented by it for a few days, unsure of what he was supposed to do; his conscience told him he should tell his mother, but he was afraid of the possible consequences. Finally, he decided to tell her, waiting until one night when his father was out on his business. What his mother told him shocked him; she told him she had known for years. It was a different girl then, but she told Dan that everyone has to have their own little secrets, to keep them sane. Her father knew about some of hers, and she knew about some of his. These words managed to simultaneously confirm, shatter, and change Dan’s beliefs. They confirmed it because they had taught him that everything he had thought about authority was right; the two main authority figures in his life, his mother and his father, were both self serving people who did not care about what was morally right or wrong. They shattered his belief because he did have a last vestige of hope that his parents and family could prove themselves not to be the people that he feared they were; instead, he found out that they were far worse people than he thought they were. And it changed them because it finally made him want to search for something to do. Most people, at his age, look for their parents to teach them what to do, either using their direct advice or using them as models and idols. But to Dan, his family was no group of idols. Thus, Dan sought out himself to find something that interested him and that satisfied him. He did not find it immediately, but the answer came to him when he thought about his disobedience. It was a way of speaking out against authority, of showing what was wrong. However, it was only one side of an argument; it was the side of disagreement, with no emotions or feelings about it presented. And thus, to present these emotions and feelings, Dan went to writing and art. Writing for the literal meaning of his thoughts, his actual theories and experiences. And art for the feeling of his thoughts; the nature of what he saw when he looked at the world, and the nature of the world he would love for it to be. When he had decided to devote himself to art and writing, getting rid of the behavior problems, as well as improving his grades, proved a necessity. His dad was watching him very closely when he was misbehaving, and it would only lead to more problems if his dad found out about the arts and writings of his son. At first he tried out photography, but it wasn’t for him. He didn’t want to see and capture the world as it was: he wanted to capture and show the world the way that he thought it was the way, sometimes, that he thought it should be. His art ranged from beautiful drawings of landscapes and nature scenes to dark portrayals of violence. For example, one of the pieces he is most proud of, portrayed a soldier clad in military gear stomping down on the head of a man with the peace sign inscribed on his forehead. Blood drips out of his crushed skull, and an American flag covers the face of the soldier. It was a piece he did not show to anyone, that he drew when he was in 9th grade, and which he keeps carefully hidden in a hiding spot in his own room. Along with his art interests, came his interest in underground music and avant garde art and horror films. Horror fascinates him as much as the art does, perhaps even more so for the subtly veiled social and political themes in certain horror films. There is also the visceral rush he gets from seeing them, the feeling that this is what his art should aspire to be, the fact that the horror films seem to encapsulate and radiate fear. As he got into the art culture, he also began to get heavily into the marijuana culture. When he was 13 and in 8th grade, it was offered to him by a 15 year old sophomore from another school named Rick. Rick was a graffiti artist, and a frequent marijuana smoker, and one day he simply asked Dan if Dan wanted to smoke. Dan said yes, seeing it as simply another opportunity for him to try a new experience. Dan enjoyed the drug immensely, and later got into the alcohol scene in a similar way. Dan was, and as is, inherently a hedonist; when his life became a search for meaning, he needed something to fill the void while he waited to see what this meaning was. Those became marijuana and alcohol; he didn’t abuse them, but he did use them frequently. They gave him physical pleasure to partially replace the mental satisfaction he was unable to receive. Also, he saw both alcohol and marijuana as something that sparked his creative ability, and enabled him to produce his best art and writing. He wrote, but he did not write creatively as he did with his art. He could not write a story to save his life, so instead, he wrote down his experiences, and his views. He wrote down his thoughts on politics, on art, on marijuana, on his family, on the people he went to school with. He wrote pages and pages, veering wildly from how he felt on a recent American political development to whether or not he really thought that girl in his music class had given the gym teacher a blowjob in the school bathroom. He had no focus to this writing, no central theme to his manifesto. It was not meant to be read by another audience, merely for him to put down his personal thoughts and feelings. Sometimes, when he got bored, he’d read through them, hoping to find something in them that was great. Something that was beyond what a normal person could produce, that would make him special; an idea that would make him revered. He never found this. Sports wise he never really did much. It was not that he did not enjoy sports, but because of his family Dan had always disliked rules and organization, even in regards to sports. He did enjoy exercise, however, seeing as it was something that cleansed both his mind and his body. Also, he often felt that marijuana and alcohol aside, his runs were also when he had some of his greatest thoughts. As such, he got into the habit of running almost every day, and despite no real idea of a fitness regime or of good eating habits, he slowly developed the body that came with it: lean, toned, and athletic. He despised his family, these feelings growing as he grew older. The peak event was when he caught his father cheating, but that was far from the only thing he disliked about them.His father was not a good father; he did not understand any of his sons, and instead of working to discover their interests and thoughts and encouraging them, he instead tried to mold them into the same person he was. On Dan’s two older brothers, he succeeded, and for that, Dan despised both them and him. He despised his brothers for allowing themselves to be molded and manipulated like that; they were both creative, intelligent people, but instead allowed themselves to become nothing more than the next generation of stooges for the government. He despised his father for failing at the central task a father has to do, which is to try and make his children better than he was. Instead, his father seemed to want his children to be worse than he was, to look at him in awe and respect. He did not encourage creativity, he encouraged blind obedience; he did not encourage living, he encouraged ceding that right over to the government. Dan always thought it was because of the role his father had in the government; they had given him, a stupid, petty, and selfish man, a role that put him above many other people. For his father, that seemed to be all he needed to pledge loyalty. His mother was, if possible, even worse. She was pro-government and pro-America, but merely in a convenient way, not with the same fervor Dan’s father was. But this was even worse, because she was not pro-anything. She was content to go to her country clubs, to watch her soap operas, and to attend her book clubs. She was the typical suburban mother, enjoying the life of luxury that came with being married to a government worker. She didn’t seem like she had children because she had wanted them, but more because having children was what a wife was supposed to do. Dan often wondered as he grew older if his mother knew the government was evil, and simply turned a blind eye to it because admitting would get in the way of enjoying the fake life she had created for herself, or if she was simply too stupid and blind to realize. Dan didn’t know which one he would consider worse. Dan was amicable and kind to his family, despite avoiding them whenever he could do it without them realizing his avoidance. He was kind and amicable to everyone, regardless of their political affiliation or views, regardless if they thought America was the best country or the worst. Dan had realized that it didn’t matter what you thought about what other people thought; it mattered what the majority thought. If you disagreed with the majority, you did not dare to speak out publicly. So although Dan, many times, did disagree with the majority, he was not fool enough to say it. It was a far smarter idea to simply nod your head and smile, and do your work on your own time. Of course, he could get around acquaintances and classmates with only the smallest amount of deception; little skill was required, particularly as few of them actually cared about Dan’s views. It was his family that he really needed to fool, or that what was he thought. It wasn’t even lying he practiced, so much as acting. He acted as the person he knew his father wanted him to be, and for awhile, he even put up this act around his mother and brothers. But he soon realized that acting, or lying, had no point around his brothers or his mother. His brothers were either too high or just too busy looking for the next party, and as long as he stayed out of trouble and didn’t embarrass her, his mother didn’t seem to care what he did. But he kept up the facade of the dutiful, faithful son around his father, and as he became better at that and lying in general, his father fell for it hook line and sinker. With his father’s suspicion of him basically gone, it allowed Dan to pursue his own interests in literature that his father would have almost certainly not approved of. The internet was censored from viewing anti-government and anti-American sites, and many books of similar topics were also censored, but if one knew how to look and searched hard enough, one could find literature that talked about the government. Some of them were from large bookstores, but the majority of the books that he got were bought from small, independent book sellers. There, he was able to find books about government and of history, even if they were still very censored. It spoke about such things as “democracy”, of a government for the people, of a place where all people had a say. Dan read all the books he could find, hiding his most favorite of them, and destroying or disposing of the rest of them. He read history, and he read philosophy, and despite both being censored to lean towards pro-America views, Dan was a smart enough kid to know where omissions and censorship had been made. Girl-wise, Dan’s life was uneven. He was popular with girls; he was a good looking guy, he was smart, and he was nice. But it was hard for him to keep any sort of relationship going; he couldn’t hide his true side if he wanted to pursue something serious with a girl, nor could he talk to a girl about the views he held most private if they disagreed. Therefore, instead of relationships, he stuck to casual things, such as flings, hookups, one night stands, and friends with benefits. People couldn’t have guessed at the real reason for it, but there were theories. Some thought he was just a player, trying to get as many notches on his belt as he could. Some thought that was the way all artists are, experimenting. Some thought he was gay, and that all the stories were just cover ups. He didn’t care what other people thought, and he didn’t let it bother him. When he was 14, he went with his father to get the piercings and the tattoos. He was a practiced liar, having learned from the propaganda his father had fed him since he was young. He fed the same thing back to his father, about how "Truth" was for the truths the government spoke, "Love" was his love for the government, and "Pain" was for the pain the government saved him from, while the rising sun was the sun rising on the new world America would build. His father bought it, and consented to the tattoos and piercings, hoping that these would be the start of his son’s progression towards a government career himself, even if he did not agree with the particular choices or ways of expressing himself. Dan has friends in Patriot High, but many of his close friends are from different schools. He is a social person, and enjoys conversation, but also enjoys his alone time. Much of his time is spent away from anyone else, either with a joint, a piece of drawing paper and a pencil, or his laptop, his fingers tapping away as he types his mind’s contents along the page. He struggles more and more with feelings of hopelessness as he gets older. He wants to, one day, fight the government and try to find some way to do what is right. When he was younger, his writings and readings were enough to do this. But as he gets older, and his military service looms ever closer, he is becoming more and more depressed by the fact that despite all of his thoughts and his subversive “actions,” the government is too much. Like any other normal highschooler, when he graduates he will be forced to serve it, take a job in its machine, and become just another victim of it. This idea scares him more than anything else in his life, and it is something that he has yet to find a way out of. For now, he keeps writing, keeps smoking, and keeps running. Advantages: Dan is smart, creative, and a practiced liar, all things that would prove to be useful in The Program. He is also in very good shape thanks to his frequent running. Disadvantages: Dan does not have many friends at Patriot High, and thus would have few allies during The Program. He is also stubborn and a loner by nature, and his anti-government and anti-American views will more than likely effect his ability to play the game. Designated Number: Male Student #16 ---- Designated Weapon: '''Hip Flask (contains whiskey) '''Conclusion: Fortunately, the Program offers an easy means of dealing with seditious elements such as M16. His scruples will prevent him from ever entering into genuine contention for victory. The above biography is as written by GameMaker . No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made. Evaluations Kills: None Killed By: Remained in dangerzone Collected Weapons: Hip Flask containing whiskey (assigned weapon) Allies: Enemies: Mid-game Evaluation: Post-Game Evaluation: Memorable Quotes: Other/Trivia Threads Below is a list of threads that contain Dan, in chronological order. Program V2 *They Think It's All Over... *In which it is ascertained that danger zones do, in fact, make you blow up Your Thoughts Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF: The Program V2 or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Dan Orvall. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here! Category:Program V2 Characters Category:Characters Category:The Program